IT'S ALL FOR YOU
Some years ago, I found myself sitting on a bench on Brighton seafront, weeping tears of deep sadness. Exhausted, overwhelmed and drowning in the icy waters of grief. I had been up at four thirty that morning, worked a 12-hour day, driven over 300 miles, and just got home from visiting my Dad who was slowly fading away as stage four cancer ripped through his whole body.
I heard soft footsteps and felt the warming presence of someone sit down on the bench next to me. I turned to look at her, tears streaming down my cheeks, and she looked back at me. For a tiny moment, we caught eyes and the corners of her mouth turned up ever so slightly before we both turned back to face the horizon. She reminded me of my Nan. Her face was round and soft and heavily wrinkled like a walnut. Her hair, which was white and fluffy with silver flecks, danced playfully in the evening breeze.
We sat together without saying a word, looking out over the ocean. Even though it was late Autumn, the waves were calm and soothing to listen to as they gently crashed into the shore. The sun was slowly sliding down towards the horizon, where the sky was a soft yellow, moving in to a deep blue higher up.
And then, as if someone had lit a match on the line where heaven kissed earth, the sky came alive, bursting into rich golden flames, flooding the space in front of us with deep ambers and burnt oranges and blazing hues of red.
I felt my heart open and my grief soften as I was awakened to the beauty of the world once more.
After a few moments, the old lady leaned towards me, gently placing one hand on my arm and, with her other hand, she pointed towards the dazzling sky in front of us and whispered, “This is for you.”
And this is what I am whispering to you too. The sunset is for you. The flower growing through the crack in the pavement is for you. The star-littered sky at night is for you. The poem that makes your heart skip a beat is for you. The pain, the fear, the grief is for you. Not to destroy you, but to transform you. To soften you. To strengthen you. To wake you up the truth and beauty of who you are. The joy, the peace, the love, the trust, the hope, the connection, the belonging, the freedom, it’s all for you.
I heard soft footsteps and felt the warming presence of someone sit down on the bench next to me. I turned to look at her, tears streaming down my cheeks, and she looked back at me. For a tiny moment, we caught eyes and the corners of her mouth turned up ever so slightly before we both turned back to face the horizon. She reminded me of my Nan. Her face was round and soft and heavily wrinkled like a walnut. Her hair, which was white and fluffy with silver flecks, danced playfully in the evening breeze.
We sat together without saying a word, looking out over the ocean. Even though it was late Autumn, the waves were calm and soothing to listen to as they gently crashed into the shore. The sun was slowly sliding down towards the horizon, where the sky was a soft yellow, moving in to a deep blue higher up.
And then, as if someone had lit a match on the line where heaven kissed earth, the sky came alive, bursting into rich golden flames, flooding the space in front of us with deep ambers and burnt oranges and blazing hues of red.
I felt my heart open and my grief soften as I was awakened to the beauty of the world once more.
After a few moments, the old lady leaned towards me, gently placing one hand on my arm and, with her other hand, she pointed towards the dazzling sky in front of us and whispered, “This is for you.”
And this is what I am whispering to you too. The sunset is for you. The flower growing through the crack in the pavement is for you. The star-littered sky at night is for you. The poem that makes your heart skip a beat is for you. The pain, the fear, the grief is for you. Not to destroy you, but to transform you. To soften you. To strengthen you. To wake you up the truth and beauty of who you are. The joy, the peace, the love, the trust, the hope, the connection, the belonging, the freedom, it’s all for you.
THE UNIVERSE OF THE BODY
We have all been told by someone – family, friends, strangers, advertising, social media – that we are too fat, too thin, too curvy, too muscular, too lean, too big, too old, too much. These comments can break our hearts and make us believe that our body is not worthy of our love and devotion.
Research suggests that over a third of us feel anxious or depressed about our body and one in eight of us have experienced suicidal thoughts because of body worries. We feel this pain because we’ve been taught to believe the body is an object to be overcome instead of a universe to be explored; something that needs to be conquered, controlled, and shaped into a socially acceptable form. Cultural messaging places the body firmly in the category of expendable. Science treats it as a machine. Advertising exploits it as a business. The church warns that it is the body that enslaves us in sin. And so, we find ourselves feeling trapped in a kind of flesh prison – alienated from our bodies, our emotions, and the world, unable to see anything beautiful in ourselves, robotically skimming the surface of our lives instead of fully, fiercely living them.
It is time to reclaim our body. To reconnect with it. To relearn it’s strength, it’s wisdom, it’s beauty. To move from the brain – and all its thinking and planning and worrying – into the wild mystery of the body, the only place where we can directly experience the vastness of our emotions and the richness of our lives.
I spent years thinking that being healthy required more control, more obsession, more struggle; that I needed to fight my body because it couldn’t be trusted. But, through my yoga and meditation and spiritual practice, I slowly discovered the body is not a battleground but a pathway to freedom. I let go of the idea in my head about what my body should look like and how much I should weigh and, instead, let my body be shaped by the things I love: yoga, handstands, walks by the ocean, homegrown vegetables, buttery apple crumbles and freshly baked carrot cake. By coming into a direct, caring relationship with my body, I glimpsed how much more joyful and peaceful life is when you let go of control.
It can take time to relinquish our hard-earned control over our body. And it can feel extremely vulnerable to trust our body and trust that everything will be ok when we do. But, as we let go of control, we will discover our body has a wisdom all of its own. It is our greatest teacher – better than any ‘guru’ or ‘expert’ or diet book. It will tell us when it needs food, when it needs movement, and when it needs rest. Our task is to listen to it. To trust it’s signals. To explore it’s depths. To feel every emotion and trust every intuition To awaken while we live in it.
As we begin to reclaim our body, as we start to heal, our body image concerns won't go away overnight. But we will discover a different way to relate to them. Instead of being things we need to overcome, our insecurities become gateways to becoming fully human. Not flawless, unfeeling, constantly productive superhumans but fully feeling, fully alive, fully awake humans.
Slowly we learn to embrace the whole body – the aches and pains, the tight muscles and injuries, the softness of our belly, the wobble of our legs, the deep sadness in our heart, the grief that clings to the wall of our ribcage. And from this place of unconditional acceptance, something magical happens: we begin to take care of our body in ways we might not have done before. We feed it nutritious food that gives us the energy to live an active life, we go to that dance class we always wanted to try but felt we were too big for, we make time for yoga and stretching and strength training, not out of fear of gaining weight or getting sick, but out of a deep love and respect for the sacred vessel that is our home.
Much of healing is a journey to embodiment; a shift from thinking and planning and analysing our lives to sensually, intuitively, nakedly living them. This is asks to move from ego-consciousness – and the self-consciousness and self-judgement that comes with it – to somatic awareness: a way of being in the world where we are able to fully live the life that is arriving in our body moment to moment.
Only when we stop trying to have power over our body, do we discover the power, the beauty, the lifeforce that lives within it.
Research suggests that over a third of us feel anxious or depressed about our body and one in eight of us have experienced suicidal thoughts because of body worries. We feel this pain because we’ve been taught to believe the body is an object to be overcome instead of a universe to be explored; something that needs to be conquered, controlled, and shaped into a socially acceptable form. Cultural messaging places the body firmly in the category of expendable. Science treats it as a machine. Advertising exploits it as a business. The church warns that it is the body that enslaves us in sin. And so, we find ourselves feeling trapped in a kind of flesh prison – alienated from our bodies, our emotions, and the world, unable to see anything beautiful in ourselves, robotically skimming the surface of our lives instead of fully, fiercely living them.
It is time to reclaim our body. To reconnect with it. To relearn it’s strength, it’s wisdom, it’s beauty. To move from the brain – and all its thinking and planning and worrying – into the wild mystery of the body, the only place where we can directly experience the vastness of our emotions and the richness of our lives.
I spent years thinking that being healthy required more control, more obsession, more struggle; that I needed to fight my body because it couldn’t be trusted. But, through my yoga and meditation and spiritual practice, I slowly discovered the body is not a battleground but a pathway to freedom. I let go of the idea in my head about what my body should look like and how much I should weigh and, instead, let my body be shaped by the things I love: yoga, handstands, walks by the ocean, homegrown vegetables, buttery apple crumbles and freshly baked carrot cake. By coming into a direct, caring relationship with my body, I glimpsed how much more joyful and peaceful life is when you let go of control.
It can take time to relinquish our hard-earned control over our body. And it can feel extremely vulnerable to trust our body and trust that everything will be ok when we do. But, as we let go of control, we will discover our body has a wisdom all of its own. It is our greatest teacher – better than any ‘guru’ or ‘expert’ or diet book. It will tell us when it needs food, when it needs movement, and when it needs rest. Our task is to listen to it. To trust it’s signals. To explore it’s depths. To feel every emotion and trust every intuition To awaken while we live in it.
As we begin to reclaim our body, as we start to heal, our body image concerns won't go away overnight. But we will discover a different way to relate to them. Instead of being things we need to overcome, our insecurities become gateways to becoming fully human. Not flawless, unfeeling, constantly productive superhumans but fully feeling, fully alive, fully awake humans.
Slowly we learn to embrace the whole body – the aches and pains, the tight muscles and injuries, the softness of our belly, the wobble of our legs, the deep sadness in our heart, the grief that clings to the wall of our ribcage. And from this place of unconditional acceptance, something magical happens: we begin to take care of our body in ways we might not have done before. We feed it nutritious food that gives us the energy to live an active life, we go to that dance class we always wanted to try but felt we were too big for, we make time for yoga and stretching and strength training, not out of fear of gaining weight or getting sick, but out of a deep love and respect for the sacred vessel that is our home.
Much of healing is a journey to embodiment; a shift from thinking and planning and analysing our lives to sensually, intuitively, nakedly living them. This is asks to move from ego-consciousness – and the self-consciousness and self-judgement that comes with it – to somatic awareness: a way of being in the world where we are able to fully live the life that is arriving in our body moment to moment.
Only when we stop trying to have power over our body, do we discover the power, the beauty, the lifeforce that lives within it.
THE QUIET CALL OF THE SOUL
If anxiety made a sound, the whole world would be humming.
Over eighty percent of us admit to feeling stressed, overwhelmed, or unable to cope. We spend our days on an anxious quest to get everything done. Exhaustion has become a way of life. And we feel as though we are sleep walking through our days —disconnected, lonely and lost. We may look successful to the outside world and yet we have the gnawing ache of something missing. Everything we thought would make us happy--the academic achievements and financial successes and luxury holidays--feel hollow and empty. And so we work even harder and push ourselves even further and exhaust ourselves even more because society has convinced us that if we earn more money and have more power and buy more stuff, we will finally be happy.
The truth is, we were not put on earth to keep struggling like this. And something deep down inside knows this. We know that there is more to life than the crazy commute and endless emails and non-stop to-do list. We know life is supposed to be more joyful, more beautiful, more meaningful than this.
What many of us don’t know, what most of us have forgotten, is the importance of taking time to look at ourselves and the world deeply to remind ourselves of who we are, where we belong and what is sacred. If we can do this, if we can create a daily ritual, an island of relief in the urgency of our lives to slow down and breathe deeply and listen inwardly, our struggles can be the source of our awakening — the very places where joy, wisdom and peace can blossom.
By creating a sacred space for silence and stillness, we can take our exhaustion, our anxiety and our loneliness and use them to help us wake up to who we really; to begin questioning our beliefs and habits and conditioning and discover life is richer and more beautiful than we have been lead to believe; to awaken the wisdom, strength and love that has been hiding within us all along.
Because underneath all the anxiety and exhaustion is a lifeforce that is unstoppable. And, when we give ourselves time to open up a conversation with our hearts, to reflect on our values, and to ask ourselves whether we are living the life we truly want to live, we awaken this force.
Every single one of us has known loss and loneliness, anxiety and overwhelm, grief and exhaustion. And, because of this, every single one of us needs a compassionate space where we can discover a peace and beauty in ourselves and the world. Our souls are crying out for this sacred space, for this healing ground where all things are welcome: our pain, our fears, our grief, our guilt, our unworthiness, our boredom, our hopes, our dreams, our loves. We need a daily practice, a tiny pause amongst the chaos of our lives where we can ask ourselves: “What is asking for my attention?”, “What matters most?”, “What do I need right now?”.
We’ve been conditioned to believe it’s self-indulgent to rest and relax and take time out from the machine pace of society. But if we are to bring love, kindness and compassion to the world, we must begin with ourselves. And so we must learn to step back from the busyness of our lives and create a daily practice, a sacred ritual where we can release, restore, and renew, so we can show up for our partners, our parents, our children, our friends and our work with a loving presence and open heart.
Sometimes, it’s not until something goes wrong in our lives or we experience a trauma in the outer world--illness, divorce, burnout, redundancy or the death of a loved one--that we begin to look at our inner world to see what has created our suffering and how we can free ourselves and each other from it.
If we don’t give ourselves the time we need for self-awareness and self-respect to blossom, we tend to repeat the habitual patterns and pain of our past. But, when we begin a daily practice, when we return to our journal or yoga mat or meditation cushion again and again, when we start walking the path of awareness and awakening, we can release the self-destructive parts of ourselves and make conscious choices about our lives. Even if we can’t change our outside circumstances, we can change our relationship with them; from one of hate and fear to one of acceptance, wisdom and compassion. This change in our way of seeing the world is enough to transform our entire lives.
No amount of therapy, self-reflection, meditation, yoga, art, writing, nutrition or exercise will save us from our pain or solve all our problems. But these practices will transform our struggles into seeds of compassion, wisdom and love, so that one day, peace will blossom where pain once grew.
This is not a self-improvement project or a hunt for perfection but a practice in letting go, loving deeply, and living fully; a loving, flowering inner adventure towards a more peaceful, joyful, meaningful way of being in the world.
And, once you’ve had a taste of this inner peace, once you’ve touched the inner freedom that’s possible when you slow down enough to listen to the quiet call of your soul, once you’ve awakened the deep love and pure joy that’s been asleep in your heart all along, your life will never ever be the same.
Over eighty percent of us admit to feeling stressed, overwhelmed, or unable to cope. We spend our days on an anxious quest to get everything done. Exhaustion has become a way of life. And we feel as though we are sleep walking through our days —disconnected, lonely and lost. We may look successful to the outside world and yet we have the gnawing ache of something missing. Everything we thought would make us happy--the academic achievements and financial successes and luxury holidays--feel hollow and empty. And so we work even harder and push ourselves even further and exhaust ourselves even more because society has convinced us that if we earn more money and have more power and buy more stuff, we will finally be happy.
The truth is, we were not put on earth to keep struggling like this. And something deep down inside knows this. We know that there is more to life than the crazy commute and endless emails and non-stop to-do list. We know life is supposed to be more joyful, more beautiful, more meaningful than this.
What many of us don’t know, what most of us have forgotten, is the importance of taking time to look at ourselves and the world deeply to remind ourselves of who we are, where we belong and what is sacred. If we can do this, if we can create a daily ritual, an island of relief in the urgency of our lives to slow down and breathe deeply and listen inwardly, our struggles can be the source of our awakening — the very places where joy, wisdom and peace can blossom.
By creating a sacred space for silence and stillness, we can take our exhaustion, our anxiety and our loneliness and use them to help us wake up to who we really; to begin questioning our beliefs and habits and conditioning and discover life is richer and more beautiful than we have been lead to believe; to awaken the wisdom, strength and love that has been hiding within us all along.
Because underneath all the anxiety and exhaustion is a lifeforce that is unstoppable. And, when we give ourselves time to open up a conversation with our hearts, to reflect on our values, and to ask ourselves whether we are living the life we truly want to live, we awaken this force.
Every single one of us has known loss and loneliness, anxiety and overwhelm, grief and exhaustion. And, because of this, every single one of us needs a compassionate space where we can discover a peace and beauty in ourselves and the world. Our souls are crying out for this sacred space, for this healing ground where all things are welcome: our pain, our fears, our grief, our guilt, our unworthiness, our boredom, our hopes, our dreams, our loves. We need a daily practice, a tiny pause amongst the chaos of our lives where we can ask ourselves: “What is asking for my attention?”, “What matters most?”, “What do I need right now?”.
We’ve been conditioned to believe it’s self-indulgent to rest and relax and take time out from the machine pace of society. But if we are to bring love, kindness and compassion to the world, we must begin with ourselves. And so we must learn to step back from the busyness of our lives and create a daily practice, a sacred ritual where we can release, restore, and renew, so we can show up for our partners, our parents, our children, our friends and our work with a loving presence and open heart.
Sometimes, it’s not until something goes wrong in our lives or we experience a trauma in the outer world--illness, divorce, burnout, redundancy or the death of a loved one--that we begin to look at our inner world to see what has created our suffering and how we can free ourselves and each other from it.
If we don’t give ourselves the time we need for self-awareness and self-respect to blossom, we tend to repeat the habitual patterns and pain of our past. But, when we begin a daily practice, when we return to our journal or yoga mat or meditation cushion again and again, when we start walking the path of awareness and awakening, we can release the self-destructive parts of ourselves and make conscious choices about our lives. Even if we can’t change our outside circumstances, we can change our relationship with them; from one of hate and fear to one of acceptance, wisdom and compassion. This change in our way of seeing the world is enough to transform our entire lives.
No amount of therapy, self-reflection, meditation, yoga, art, writing, nutrition or exercise will save us from our pain or solve all our problems. But these practices will transform our struggles into seeds of compassion, wisdom and love, so that one day, peace will blossom where pain once grew.
This is not a self-improvement project or a hunt for perfection but a practice in letting go, loving deeply, and living fully; a loving, flowering inner adventure towards a more peaceful, joyful, meaningful way of being in the world.
And, once you’ve had a taste of this inner peace, once you’ve touched the inner freedom that’s possible when you slow down enough to listen to the quiet call of your soul, once you’ve awakened the deep love and pure joy that’s been asleep in your heart all along, your life will never ever be the same.
BREATH IS THE BRIDGE
The breath is our basic connection to life. It is our anchor to the present moment, a doorway to our inner world, and a bridge connecting mind and body, conscious and unconscious, human and earth. As we draw each breath inside our body, just for a moment, the world becomes us, and, as we exhale, a part of us becomes the world.
But, as we increasingly find ourselves moving at a breathless pace, trying to keep up with the machines of our culture, we begin to lose our connection with the breath. We might find that we take short, shallow breaths and sometimes we might not be breathing at all – unintentionally holding our breath and clenching our jaw as a response to feeling stressed, anxious or overwhelmed.
When we lose our connection with the breath, we also lose our connection with our body, our emotions, and life itself. We find ourselves trapped in the thinking, judging part of the brain – analysing the past and worrying about the future – instead of feeling the full force of life that flows through us and around us from moment to moment.
Reconnecting with the breath takes time. If we have spent years unconsciously restricting our breath because of stress or taking short, shallow breaths because of the cultural pressure to have flat stomach, learning to breathe smoothly and evenly again is often quite difficult.
With time, the breath becomes the background soundtrack for our lives. It is a universal, ever-present, beautifully simple tool that frees us from the chatter of our thinking mind so that we can experience life in a fully embodied, empowered way.
Our breath is a reflection of how we are feeling – even before we are consciously aware of how we are feeling – so, whenever we notice the breath becoming sharp or shallow, or rapid or heavy, we can use it to pay attention to the anger, fear, or frustration that is swirling below the surface of our lives so we can deal with it mindfully and compassionately. And, whenever our mind becomes scattered, we can use our breath to gently take hold of it and bring us back into the present moment. Because we cannot think and be aware of our breath at the same time, often, one full conscious breath is all it takes to interrupt the incessant steam of thinking and worrying that many of us live with.
The breath is a powerful tool. It allows us to explore whatever is unknown about ourselves. To escape our judging, thinking mind. To experience the aliveness flowing through our body. To access our deepest potential. To ground us in the present moment. To guide us home to our true Self.
But, as we increasingly find ourselves moving at a breathless pace, trying to keep up with the machines of our culture, we begin to lose our connection with the breath. We might find that we take short, shallow breaths and sometimes we might not be breathing at all – unintentionally holding our breath and clenching our jaw as a response to feeling stressed, anxious or overwhelmed.
When we lose our connection with the breath, we also lose our connection with our body, our emotions, and life itself. We find ourselves trapped in the thinking, judging part of the brain – analysing the past and worrying about the future – instead of feeling the full force of life that flows through us and around us from moment to moment.
Reconnecting with the breath takes time. If we have spent years unconsciously restricting our breath because of stress or taking short, shallow breaths because of the cultural pressure to have flat stomach, learning to breathe smoothly and evenly again is often quite difficult.
With time, the breath becomes the background soundtrack for our lives. It is a universal, ever-present, beautifully simple tool that frees us from the chatter of our thinking mind so that we can experience life in a fully embodied, empowered way.
Our breath is a reflection of how we are feeling – even before we are consciously aware of how we are feeling – so, whenever we notice the breath becoming sharp or shallow, or rapid or heavy, we can use it to pay attention to the anger, fear, or frustration that is swirling below the surface of our lives so we can deal with it mindfully and compassionately. And, whenever our mind becomes scattered, we can use our breath to gently take hold of it and bring us back into the present moment. Because we cannot think and be aware of our breath at the same time, often, one full conscious breath is all it takes to interrupt the incessant steam of thinking and worrying that many of us live with.
The breath is a powerful tool. It allows us to explore whatever is unknown about ourselves. To escape our judging, thinking mind. To experience the aliveness flowing through our body. To access our deepest potential. To ground us in the present moment. To guide us home to our true Self.
GENTLE AWAKENING
Awakening is literally ‘waking up’ to who we really are. Waking up from our trance of unworthiness. Waking up to the strength, courage and beauty dancing within us. As if emerging from a deep sleep, we begin to see that life is richer, deeper and a million times more beautiful than we have been lead to believe.
Awakening is not about becoming superhuman or developing psychic powers. It is the process of becoming wholly and consciously who we are; of escaping the prison of our false self; of being fully present to the world around us and within us; of stepping back from the stories in our mind and letting go of the fears blocking our heart so we can wake up to our wisdom, our love, our wholeness.
Awakening is an unlearning of the thought and behavioural patterns that cause us to suffer; an untangling of who we are from who we’ve been told we should be; an unravelling of our cultural conditioning and other people’s expectations. It is a rediscovering, a remembering, a reconnecting to our body, our intuition, our wisdom; to other beings; to nature; to love; to beauty; to joy; to this wild and precious adventure of being alive.
Sometimes our awakening is gentle and sometimes it’s fierce. Sometimes it comes through hard work and other times through grace. Sometimes it’s slow and tender and other times it strikes us like lighting and, with a flash of insight, our old beliefs crumble and we see the world as if for the first time.
Awakening is not something mystical and other worldly. It may be triggered by a tragedy or trauma--illness, loss, divorce--but mostly, awakening happens in the messy and mundane moments of our ordinary everyday lives: when we’re listening to a piece of music or when we are surrounded by nature or when we are watching the sunset on a random Thursday night and inner peace flows through us and, just for moment, we glimpse who we really are.
But awakening isn’t always this blissful. It can be a very unbeautiful thing. It’s raw. It’s primal. It’s wild. It strips us of our masks and reveals us as human. It asks us to face the feelings we have been running from all our lives. To explore our inner darkness and compassionately embrace whatever we may find. To bring every part of ourselves that we believe is shameful, unacceptable and ugly out of the shadows so we can see them, heal them, and learn to love them. Because, as we meet these hidden and rejected parts of ourselves--tattered, withered, hungry and yearning to be explored, accepted and integrated—we realise we don’t need to be afraid anymore because we have nothing to hide. We have met ourselves unmasked. And, maybe for the first time in our life, we are waking up to the beauty of who we truly are. We are letting ourselves be seen. Wholly, fully and nakedly. We are letting ourselves be loved. Scars and all.
By doing our inner work, by observing our thoughts, by questioning our beliefs, by slowing down and giving ourselves time for self-reflection, relaxation and meditation, we support our awakening and move through the more challenging periods more quickly. It takes practise, honesty and vulnerability to do this inner work. But, you will begin to see that even those heavy moments of grief and confusion and loneliness are gifts. They are a doorway to inner peace, to deep love, to a rich and beautiful way of being alive.
SIGNS OF AWAKENING
Awakening doesn’t always feel like awakening. As well as being one of the most beautiful experiences in life, at times, especially at the beginning, we can feel lost, confused and deeply alone. Many of us have already started our journey of awakening but we don’t realise it. Rather than seeing our loneliness, despair, deep insights and mystical moments as signs of awakening, we are encouraged to shut them out for fear no one will take us seriously if we talk about them. We don’t realise that our confusion, emptiness and exhaustion is our soul’s cry for freedom; that our suffering is a call for change; that the anxiety and restlessness that rumbles within us is the beginning of a beautiful journey towards healing, transformation and self-realisation.
Awakening is a unique journey for each of us but some of the common signs of awakening include:
THE SPIRAL OF AWAKENING
We’ve been taught to believe that life is about constant progress. That we should always be moving forwards and getting ahead. But awakening is rarely linear. Instead, it is more like a flower, opening petal by petal, or a spiral into the depths of ourselves. Sometimes we move forwards, backwards, inwards, sideways; sometimes we stay still; sometimes we spin in circles; sometimes we fall down into our inner darkness; sometimes we rise upwards into a broader, deeper, richer world; sometimes we ascend to mountain tops of joy and sometimes we find ourselves tumbling painfully into shadowed chasms within us only to discover something beautiful and gifting in the abyss.
The journey of awakening is not a neat and tidy process that can be fit into certain categories. We each walk our own path. However, it can be helpful to have an idea of what we might experience on this inner adventure so that we can find our bearings. Below is a brief guide to some of the common stages of awakening. These universal stages are found in ancient myths and spiritual teachings, such as Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey and the Buddhist teaching of Taming the Ox, as well sharing elements with psychological theories including Elisabeth Kubler Ross’ renowned stages of grief and Carl Jung’s individuation process (a pathway to becoming the most integrated and authentic version of our unique self as possible). Remember, this is not a linear process and we often move backwards and forwards between stages in a spiral of healing unfolding and transformation.
Stage one — Exhaustion and emptiness.
In this stage we feel lost, alone and afraid. We feel something is missing from our lives but we’re not sure what. We find the ordinary world exhausting and meaningless. It feels like we are living on autopilot — sleep walking our way through life, making choices based on other people’s opinions and what we’ve been conditioned to believe. We feel inadequate and unworthy and try to fill the void inside with external things such as food, alcohol, drugs, work and other addictive substances and behaviours.
Stage two — The call to adventure.
We begin to realise that nothing in the outside world can ever bring us true happiness and begin craving a richer and more fulfilling life. We yearn to feel whole again. We feel an inner pull to go looking for our true selves. For a long time, we resist this call—either because it is drowned out by our inner critic or because it means leaving our comfort zone and adventuring into the wild unknown— but eventually we realise we only have one choice: remain trapped forever in our inner prisons or begin the messy, mysterious journey to healing, wholeness and inner freedom.
Stage three — Self-exploration.
In this stage we begin asking ourselves big, brave questions. Who am I? Why am I here? What is the meaning of life? We begin looking for our purpose. We start reading self-help books and dabbling in spiritual and psychological practices to help us understand ourselves better. We start to see how our frantic busyness is a distraction from looking inwards and make time for silence, stillness and self-reflection.
Stage four — Self-discovery.
As we drop below the surface of our lives, we begin to discover who we are beneath the masks we wear. We experience glimpses of our true self and moments of deep peace and freedom. We start doing deeper inner work and begin to untangle who we’ve been conditioned to be by our parents, education and culture from who we really are. We realise the voice in our head and the incessant thoughts and beliefs are not who we are and we begin to shift from thinking to awareness.
Stage five — Intuition and inner wisdom.
In this stage we begin trusting our inner wisdom over the noise of the external world. We stop asking others for permission and instead tap into our inner guidance. We become aware of the times we have betrayed ourselves in order to please others and begin making changes in the outer world (such as making changes to our job, relationship and lifestyle) so we are living more in line with our values.
Stage six — Breaking down and breaking through.
We feel some of our conditioned beliefs releasing and old patterns dissolving. As we begin to realise that awakening is not all love and light, we often experience the desire to return to the safety, comfort and naivety of our old life. But these moments are fleeting and often lead to breakthroughs. In this stage, we glimpse more and more of our true self and experience times of deep connection, joy and awe.
Stage seven — Lost and found and lost again.
No adventure is easy, including inner ones. In this stage, we feel self-doubt about the path we are on. Family and friends might be questioning our choices and criticising our transformation. We might feel we have stagnated, become bored of our spiritual practices, or sense the self-help guru we’ve been following all this time is actually a fraud. We crave something authentic and transformative. This craving forces us to dig deeper and discover an inner power we didn’t know existed.
Stage eight — Self-transformation.
In this stage we begin shedding our false skins, taking off our masks and transforming into our fullest, most authentic self. We might experience grief and loss as parts of our old false self die as well as a sense of expansiveness and freedom as we are reborn. We shift from being driven by the needs of our ego--for money, power, security, comfort--to trusting and following the call of our soul. We begin to settle into our own skin and develop a huge amount of gratitude and respect for who we are becoming.
Stage nine — Illuminating the shadow.
We feel strong enough to begin shining a light on our inner darkness. We aren’t interested in fluffy feel-good spiritual practices anymore and feel motivated to journey deeper; to meet our inner demons; to explore our shadows and bring any part of ourselves that we have rejected because we believe they are shameful, unacceptable and ugly into the light where we can see them, heal them, and learn to love them.
Stage ten — Homecoming and integration.
In this stage we take everything we have learnt from our inner journey and apply it to our work, relationships and daily life. We see the world in a radically different way where nothing is mundane and everything is sacred. We fall in love with the simple joys of life and see the extraordinary in the ordinary. We no longer search for anything outside of ourselves to make us happy and discover that the light we have been seeking has always been shining within. We feel deep transformation, profound change and we are fully at peace with who we are. We might feel called to share our insights through teaching, counselling, writing or art. It no longer feels as though we are sleep walking through our lives. Instead we feel deeply present and vibrantly alive.
Awakening is not about becoming superhuman or developing psychic powers. It is the process of becoming wholly and consciously who we are; of escaping the prison of our false self; of being fully present to the world around us and within us; of stepping back from the stories in our mind and letting go of the fears blocking our heart so we can wake up to our wisdom, our love, our wholeness.
Awakening is an unlearning of the thought and behavioural patterns that cause us to suffer; an untangling of who we are from who we’ve been told we should be; an unravelling of our cultural conditioning and other people’s expectations. It is a rediscovering, a remembering, a reconnecting to our body, our intuition, our wisdom; to other beings; to nature; to love; to beauty; to joy; to this wild and precious adventure of being alive.
Sometimes our awakening is gentle and sometimes it’s fierce. Sometimes it comes through hard work and other times through grace. Sometimes it’s slow and tender and other times it strikes us like lighting and, with a flash of insight, our old beliefs crumble and we see the world as if for the first time.
Awakening is not something mystical and other worldly. It may be triggered by a tragedy or trauma--illness, loss, divorce--but mostly, awakening happens in the messy and mundane moments of our ordinary everyday lives: when we’re listening to a piece of music or when we are surrounded by nature or when we are watching the sunset on a random Thursday night and inner peace flows through us and, just for moment, we glimpse who we really are.
But awakening isn’t always this blissful. It can be a very unbeautiful thing. It’s raw. It’s primal. It’s wild. It strips us of our masks and reveals us as human. It asks us to face the feelings we have been running from all our lives. To explore our inner darkness and compassionately embrace whatever we may find. To bring every part of ourselves that we believe is shameful, unacceptable and ugly out of the shadows so we can see them, heal them, and learn to love them. Because, as we meet these hidden and rejected parts of ourselves--tattered, withered, hungry and yearning to be explored, accepted and integrated—we realise we don’t need to be afraid anymore because we have nothing to hide. We have met ourselves unmasked. And, maybe for the first time in our life, we are waking up to the beauty of who we truly are. We are letting ourselves be seen. Wholly, fully and nakedly. We are letting ourselves be loved. Scars and all.
By doing our inner work, by observing our thoughts, by questioning our beliefs, by slowing down and giving ourselves time for self-reflection, relaxation and meditation, we support our awakening and move through the more challenging periods more quickly. It takes practise, honesty and vulnerability to do this inner work. But, you will begin to see that even those heavy moments of grief and confusion and loneliness are gifts. They are a doorway to inner peace, to deep love, to a rich and beautiful way of being alive.
SIGNS OF AWAKENING
Awakening doesn’t always feel like awakening. As well as being one of the most beautiful experiences in life, at times, especially at the beginning, we can feel lost, confused and deeply alone. Many of us have already started our journey of awakening but we don’t realise it. Rather than seeing our loneliness, despair, deep insights and mystical moments as signs of awakening, we are encouraged to shut them out for fear no one will take us seriously if we talk about them. We don’t realise that our confusion, emptiness and exhaustion is our soul’s cry for freedom; that our suffering is a call for change; that the anxiety and restlessness that rumbles within us is the beginning of a beautiful journey towards healing, transformation and self-realisation.
Awakening is a unique journey for each of us but some of the common signs of awakening include:
- You feel anxious and exhausted
- You sense something is missing but you don’t know what
- You crave meaning and purpose
- You lack motivation
- You feel as though you are sleep walking through your life
- You want to get to know yourself
- You feel lost and alone
- You crave solitude
- You realise how a lot of things you have been taught to believe aren’t true
- You become aware of your harmful habits and beliefs
- You are extremely sensitive to other people’s emotions and energy
- You are deeply affected by universal suffering such as homelessness, war and ecological destruction
- You begin asking deeper questions, such as “Who am I?” and “What is the meaning of life?”
- You feel called to make the world a better place
- You experience moments of wonder and awe
- You look for the gifts hidden in your suffering
- You stop blaming others, your situation and the world and are willing to take full responsibility for your life
- You begin trusting your body, yourself and life itself
- You experience a sense of connection, wholeness and oneness
- You feel deep love and belonging
THE SPIRAL OF AWAKENING
We’ve been taught to believe that life is about constant progress. That we should always be moving forwards and getting ahead. But awakening is rarely linear. Instead, it is more like a flower, opening petal by petal, or a spiral into the depths of ourselves. Sometimes we move forwards, backwards, inwards, sideways; sometimes we stay still; sometimes we spin in circles; sometimes we fall down into our inner darkness; sometimes we rise upwards into a broader, deeper, richer world; sometimes we ascend to mountain tops of joy and sometimes we find ourselves tumbling painfully into shadowed chasms within us only to discover something beautiful and gifting in the abyss.
The journey of awakening is not a neat and tidy process that can be fit into certain categories. We each walk our own path. However, it can be helpful to have an idea of what we might experience on this inner adventure so that we can find our bearings. Below is a brief guide to some of the common stages of awakening. These universal stages are found in ancient myths and spiritual teachings, such as Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey and the Buddhist teaching of Taming the Ox, as well sharing elements with psychological theories including Elisabeth Kubler Ross’ renowned stages of grief and Carl Jung’s individuation process (a pathway to becoming the most integrated and authentic version of our unique self as possible). Remember, this is not a linear process and we often move backwards and forwards between stages in a spiral of healing unfolding and transformation.
Stage one — Exhaustion and emptiness.
In this stage we feel lost, alone and afraid. We feel something is missing from our lives but we’re not sure what. We find the ordinary world exhausting and meaningless. It feels like we are living on autopilot — sleep walking our way through life, making choices based on other people’s opinions and what we’ve been conditioned to believe. We feel inadequate and unworthy and try to fill the void inside with external things such as food, alcohol, drugs, work and other addictive substances and behaviours.
Stage two — The call to adventure.
We begin to realise that nothing in the outside world can ever bring us true happiness and begin craving a richer and more fulfilling life. We yearn to feel whole again. We feel an inner pull to go looking for our true selves. For a long time, we resist this call—either because it is drowned out by our inner critic or because it means leaving our comfort zone and adventuring into the wild unknown— but eventually we realise we only have one choice: remain trapped forever in our inner prisons or begin the messy, mysterious journey to healing, wholeness and inner freedom.
Stage three — Self-exploration.
In this stage we begin asking ourselves big, brave questions. Who am I? Why am I here? What is the meaning of life? We begin looking for our purpose. We start reading self-help books and dabbling in spiritual and psychological practices to help us understand ourselves better. We start to see how our frantic busyness is a distraction from looking inwards and make time for silence, stillness and self-reflection.
Stage four — Self-discovery.
As we drop below the surface of our lives, we begin to discover who we are beneath the masks we wear. We experience glimpses of our true self and moments of deep peace and freedom. We start doing deeper inner work and begin to untangle who we’ve been conditioned to be by our parents, education and culture from who we really are. We realise the voice in our head and the incessant thoughts and beliefs are not who we are and we begin to shift from thinking to awareness.
Stage five — Intuition and inner wisdom.
In this stage we begin trusting our inner wisdom over the noise of the external world. We stop asking others for permission and instead tap into our inner guidance. We become aware of the times we have betrayed ourselves in order to please others and begin making changes in the outer world (such as making changes to our job, relationship and lifestyle) so we are living more in line with our values.
Stage six — Breaking down and breaking through.
We feel some of our conditioned beliefs releasing and old patterns dissolving. As we begin to realise that awakening is not all love and light, we often experience the desire to return to the safety, comfort and naivety of our old life. But these moments are fleeting and often lead to breakthroughs. In this stage, we glimpse more and more of our true self and experience times of deep connection, joy and awe.
Stage seven — Lost and found and lost again.
No adventure is easy, including inner ones. In this stage, we feel self-doubt about the path we are on. Family and friends might be questioning our choices and criticising our transformation. We might feel we have stagnated, become bored of our spiritual practices, or sense the self-help guru we’ve been following all this time is actually a fraud. We crave something authentic and transformative. This craving forces us to dig deeper and discover an inner power we didn’t know existed.
Stage eight — Self-transformation.
In this stage we begin shedding our false skins, taking off our masks and transforming into our fullest, most authentic self. We might experience grief and loss as parts of our old false self die as well as a sense of expansiveness and freedom as we are reborn. We shift from being driven by the needs of our ego--for money, power, security, comfort--to trusting and following the call of our soul. We begin to settle into our own skin and develop a huge amount of gratitude and respect for who we are becoming.
Stage nine — Illuminating the shadow.
We feel strong enough to begin shining a light on our inner darkness. We aren’t interested in fluffy feel-good spiritual practices anymore and feel motivated to journey deeper; to meet our inner demons; to explore our shadows and bring any part of ourselves that we have rejected because we believe they are shameful, unacceptable and ugly into the light where we can see them, heal them, and learn to love them.
Stage ten — Homecoming and integration.
In this stage we take everything we have learnt from our inner journey and apply it to our work, relationships and daily life. We see the world in a radically different way where nothing is mundane and everything is sacred. We fall in love with the simple joys of life and see the extraordinary in the ordinary. We no longer search for anything outside of ourselves to make us happy and discover that the light we have been seeking has always been shining within. We feel deep transformation, profound change and we are fully at peace with who we are. We might feel called to share our insights through teaching, counselling, writing or art. It no longer feels as though we are sleep walking through our lives. Instead we feel deeply present and vibrantly alive.